Cuil, a ridiculously hyped search engine that launched this past July, is now worth next to nothing in market share at around 0.01 percent, according to data released by Net Applications.
The site, founded by former Google employees, was widely dubbed a “Google-killer” (claiming it had the world’s largest search index at around 120 billion pages) and boasting more relevant results.
But Cuil started melting into nothing pretty fast, drawing criticism almost immediately after launch. There was an initial server crash, complaints over the accuracy of search results, rumors that its crawlers were killing some websites, and just recently its VP of product, Louis Monier, jumped ship. Before launch, investors valued the property at a whopping $200 million, according to a recent report from VentureBeat.
A new blog post on Cuil’s site offers little information about the future of the company, but they do say that they’re “taking a deep breath” and putting their “heads back down to work hard.”
Cuil frozen out: market share drops to next to nothing [IT Pro]
Chart: Net Applications
